On the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Times

Schmidt Number: S-3456

On-line since: 15th August, 2010

Lecture 2

Dornach, 26th December, 1917

I

N
the last lecture I tried to describe the course which was
taken during the 19th century and on into our time; I showed
how the knowledge and awareness of super-sensible impulses working
in World-evolution was more and more exterminated, I tried to
illustrate this by an example which is especially significant
for us, namely, the complete misunderstanding of the
Mysteries. We saw that there existed until the end of the
18th century a clear and distinct consciousness of the fact
that there is a super-sensible essence behind the world of
things sensible — behind those entities which man can
reach with his ordinary, every-day intellect. Moreover, until
the end of the 18th century there was a consciousness of the
fact that it is necessary, somehow to bring the human soul
into direct connection with this super-sensible world,

I pointed out
the great contrast between such ways of thought as those of
Louis Claude de Saint Martin, and of Dupuis. In Saint Martin
we still find a consciousness of ancient truths of the
Mysteries. This was possible for him, inasmuch as he was
himself, in a certain sense, a pupil and successor of Jacob
Boehme.

In Saint
Martin, therefore, whose ways of thought still had great
influence at that time, we found the declining aspect of the
consciousness of the 18th century. In Dupuis, on the other
hand, we found the other aspect — the rise of the way
of thinking which was typical of the 19th century. This
latter way of thinking is convinced that all
Mystery-revelations are fundamentally based on error or
deceit ; and that no man is truly enlightened unless he does
away with all that pertains to the truths of the Mysteries,
and restricts himself to a science purely and simply founded
on the world of the senses, and on the intellect which
depends upon the senses. Then we pointed out that in contrast
to the materialism which was subsequently developed in the
19th century, which was fundamentally Philistine, the
materialism of Dupuis still had a certain greatness,
freshness and freedom.

In a certain
sense, the whole of the evolution of the 19th century —
and reaching on into our time — stood under the
influence of this rejection of all things super-sensible.
Efforts were made, it is true, from one side and another, to
introduce some kind of connection between the human soul and
the super-sensible. But these attempts either remained in the
most restricted circles, or else they worked with antiquated
or otherwise inadequate methods. It was in fact the task of
the 19th century to develop a certain fund drive man more and
more into things utterly contrary to the wholesome evolution
of the last three civilisation-epochs which the human race
has still before it on the Earth.

We shall see
the Mystery of Golgotha in the true light, if we recognise in
it that which must compensate and balance the harmful forces
which are arising from these quarters: All that the Mystery
of Golgotha can bring about, is such as to counteract that
which proceeds from these forces. The latter cannot be
rightly paralysed in any other way than by intelligent
devotion to the Mystery of Golgotha. The mere narration that
the Mystery of Golgotha took place at the beginning of our
era — the mere repeating of the Gospel story as
interpreted in the ordinary Churches of to-day — is
ineffective in this sense; for it implies the fundamental
prejudice that Revelation was only possible at the beginning
of our era. Revelation continues. Christ Jesus is always
present. The spirit and the outlook, recognising Christ Jesus
as ever-present, is precisely that Christian spirit which can
be gained through anthroposophical Spiritual Science. But
this requires us to make ourselves acquainted in all detail
with the real impulses that are connected with the Mystery of
Golgotha. We must learn increasingly to recognise that which
lies hidden in the Mystery of Golgotha.

One such truth
I have recently pointed out. Whatever a man undertakes
— not as concerns his own individual, personal Karma,
but in the whole context of the social, ethical, historic
working of mankind, is subject to a certain law of historic
evolution, namely this: That which is done in a given year,
when, as a thought, it springs forth from man, has — so
to speak — a Christmas character. This, as I said,
refers to the effects of our deeds in the whole nexus of the
social life; not to our personal Karma. If I manufacture a
pair of shoes, needless to say there is something in this act
that rays back, so to speak, into my personal Karma. That is
a stream by itself. But I manufacture the shoes for another
human being; and inasmuch as I do so, I am already working
socially. No doubt an elementary process; and it is a long way
from this to the measures of political and social life on a
large scale. Nevertheless, everything that lies along this
line belongs to the realm of those things which become
effective after 33 years. And after the 33 years — when
a seed which has thus been planted has had time, as it were,
to ripen, — then it goes on working. A seed of thought
or of deed takes a whole human generation — 33 years
— to ripen. When it is ripened, it goes on working in
historic evolution for 66 years more. Thus the intensity of
an impulse planted by man in the stream of history can truly
be recognised in its working through three generations, that
is, through a whole century.

Now the fixing
of the two outstanding festivals of Christianity —
Christmas and Easter — has been done in a very
significant way. Christmas is a so-called immovable Feast,
coinciding approximately with the Winter Solstice. Easter is
a movable Feast. Christmas is fixed because, as you know, it
expresses a certain cosmic fact — a fact we cannot
bring before our souls too often. It is prejudice to suppose
that our Earth is no more than what Geology and Physics,
Mineralogy and Geophysics, are prepared to recognise. The
Earth in reality is a mighty spiritual organism. We live not
only on a mineral Earth, surrounded by an airy atmosphere; we
live within the mighty spiritual organism, Earth. This
spiritual organism has, in a certain sense, an ascending and
a descending life. It sleeps in Summer-time; its deepest
sleep is at the time when the Summer Solstice has occurred,
that is, at the time when — for us — the days are
longest and the nights are shortest. Man's sleep is only
determined by time; the sleep of the Earth is also determined
by space. The different places on the Earth sleep
differently. But I will only touch on that. It is in Winter
that the Earth has its true waking season; then it is that
that which we may call the intellect of the Earth is most
active.

Herein lies the
deep meaning of the Christmas Festival. It is to remind us
that when the shortest days and the longest nights are with
us — for the place where this is so — the Earth
is most wide-awake. So, then, it is, for one who truly
recognises the Christmas Festival: he should seek for the
Earth-intellect, even as it can be found in the deep depths
of the Earth, — just as the Christ-Child is found in a
stable, or in a cave or grotto, according to the various
conceptions.

Christmas is
therefore an immovable Feast. Easter, on the other hand, is
movable; determined by the positions of the Sun and Moon.
Thereby the Easter Festival becomes the symbol of cosmic
events beyond the Earth; it is, as it were, a spiritual, if
celestial Festival. Materialistically minded people, as I
have often pointed out, have not refrained from attacking
this mobility of Easter, for the simple reason that it brings
disorder into the Philistine, bourgeois order of the 19th
century. I myself have often been present at discussions,
notably on the part of astronomers, where it was advocated
that Easter should be fixed in a purely pedantic and
schematic way, say, on the first Sunday in April. From the
19th century point of view, many reasons no doubt could be
adduced in favour of a fixed Easter. After all, you need but
think of this: The movable Easter is completely in accord
with the cosmic Book of the New Testament; it is at least in
accordance with the spirit of the New Testament. But in the
19th century, and in a preparatory way even before that,
there was another book which became far more important than
the Gospels. People may not always admit it, but it is so.
The book which became more important than the Gospels is the
one on the first page of which [in German- speaking
countries] the words ‘Mit Gott’ are
always printed, though needless to say, only the ungodliest
matters are entered in it, namely the figures under the
respective headings Debit and Credit. In
other words, it is the business man's ledger, on the front
page of which — so far, at least, as my experience goes
— you always find the inscription ‘Mit
Gott,’ although its contents are as I said.

This book,
naturally enough, is thrown into no little disorder by Easter
falling on a different date each year. It would be far easier
to keep it in order it Easter were fixed. The proposal has
often been made in one form or another. It is in fact the
attack of materialism on one of the last and outermost
ramparts of a spiritual view of the world, — on the
arrangement of Easter according to the heavenly
constellations of the Sun and Moon.

But there is a
yet deeper meaning in it, that the time between Christmas and
Easter is made to vary in successive years. We know that the
Christmas Festival, properly speaking, belongs to the Easter
Festival that follows 33 years later. This indeed is a fixed
period of time, representing as it does the time, required
for the working out of world-historic seeds. But there is
another thing which is not so fixed, namely the following:
Certain impulses — we may describe them here as
Christmas-impulses — take place in a given year; others
again in the next year, others the year after, and so on. Now
the successive Christmas impulses in historic evolution are
by no means all of equal intensity; some of them work more
strongly, others more feebly. It may be, for instance, that
the impulses laid down in a given year have less incisive
power for the 33 years that follow, than the impulses of the
next year have, for the 33 years which follow it in turn; and
so on. Precisely this fact is indicated, in that the time
between Christmas and Easter is longer or shorter as the case
may he. Thus, even this mobility of Easter calls our
attention to something which a man ought well to study, if he
would truly understand the working of events in history.

Now you may
raise the question: How shall man gain any idea, how
strongly his impulses will work into the next 33 years? Can
he gain any conception at all, as to whether his impulses are
working in a favourable or in an unfavourable sense?
Undoubtedly the answer to such it question is immensely
difficult for our Time, inasmuch as this Time suffers from
abstraction as from a terrible and insidious disease. This
age only desires, wherever possible, to understand the
Universe with a few abstract concepts; it would fain be
removed as far as can be from any comprehension of events
with the full human being, or from a living human experience
of Time and of the streams of Time. If you will only
recognise, as a true Science of the Heavens, what modern
astronomers can calculate with their quite abstract
mathematics, it is no doubt impossible to stir your heart and
mind into a full and living interest in these calculations of
an abstract mathematics. Yet this is what humanity needs to
evolve once more. It is necessary for mankind that we should
no longer merely devote the intellect to the things we do. We
should know that our very heart's blood is united with every
action we perform, be it the most trivial and everyday.
This is sincerely possible if we are prepared to enter
earnestly into Spiritual Science, — into what Spiritual
Science is and what it can be. It is quite true: it man who
only wants to enter into things with abstract intellect
(unless they fall within the narrow circle of his own selfish
or family affairs), — he will not easily find the way
to unite his heart's blood with the things he wills and does.
Yet this is precisely the mission of Spiritual Science: to
widen out the souls horizon, to extend the circle of interest
over far wider domains than is possible under the influence
of the materialist abstractions of the 19th century. What
mankind needs is, above all, this widening of the sphere of
interest, and there is only one way to attain it: to fill the
human soul again and again with Knowledge, which — as
we have seen once more during the last week's lectures
— can be widened out in our time far beyond
the limits of the senses and the sense-bound intellect, or of
the life between birth and death. Knowledge to-day can be
widened out beyond these frontiers, — out into the
Universal All, which, as we know, we share in common with
those human souls who arc in the realms between death and a
new birth. We cannot learn to know these human souls unless
we also learn to know the other aspects — those other
aspects through which human beings have to live between death
and a new birth. No doubt the thoughts about life between
death and a new birth were far remote from the Philistine
science of the 19th or even of the 20th century. They could
not have been more remote; for this epoch believed that the
only salvation lay in piecing together by intellectual
association all that the senses can afford.

From this point
of view Spiritual Science is indeed in sharpest opposition to
the ideal of the 19th century. Spiritual Science must
emphasise most vigorously the turning of the soul towards the
Spirit, even as the 19th century emphasised the turning of
the human soul away from the Spirit. And as I have already
pointed out during our recent lectures, the two fundamental
pillars of the Christian understanding of the world, —
namely the Immaculate Conception of Christ Jesus, and the
Resurrection of Christ Jesus — can be none other than
nonsense to the natural-scientific age. Spiritual Science, on
the other hand, must turn again quite definitely to these two
basic pillars of the Christian world-conception.

The Roman
Catholic Church has acquired a certain habit of speech
whereby it is able to get away from many important problems
which are contained deep down within the womb of its
evolution. The Roman Catholic Church will, speak, for
instance, of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary;
but it will not be prepared to look for those spiritual
forces in the soul whereby the fact of the Immaculate
Conception would be made intelligible. If you ask the
enlightened theologians of the Roman Catholic Church about
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, you certainly will
not expect them to enter into a discussion such as must be
brought into flow once more through Spiritual Science. They
will tell you something like this: — You must rise from
the idea of the woman Mary to that which the woman Mary has
really become in the course of evolution, namely, the Church;
The Church in reality represents the Virgin Mary. This being
granted, it goes without saying that the Virgin Mary, the
Church, perpetually gives birth to the Christ. Through the
Holy Spirit, the Church must perpetually conceive the Christ.
That is to say, the Church is under perpetual inspiration
from the Holy Spirit, and that which the Church reveals is
none other than the Word, the Logos.

This is the
perfectly correct Catholic doctrine. In Holy Catholic Church
the inspiring Holy Spirit kindles the eternal Word —
the Word which was in the beginning, and which is born
throughout all time by Holy Church, the Virgin Mary. It is
the correct and familiar Roman Catholic theological
conception. You may tell me that one hears very little said
of this. That is quite true, and for the 19th century it was
just as well that there was little said of it. But the idea
was all the more effective among those who were still able to
be saved from the impulses of materialism.

These three,
— the inspiring Spirit, the Virgin Mother, and the
Logos or the Word — must of course be maintained; they
must he sought for through Spiritual Science also. And would
say, in an Imaginative form did endeavour to point out these
things during my recent lectures, when I described the
transition from the old Mysteries to the new. I said that
Antiquity only got so far with its Mysteries that it was able
to revere, in Pallas Athene, the Virgin Wisdom, Pallas Athene
is indeed a virgin figure; but within the ancient epoch this
Virgin Wisdom did not give birth to the Logos. This is
precisely the characteristic feature of ancient Greece, for
example; it stops short at the Virgin Wisdom, whereas the new
Age passes on to the Son of the Virgin Wisdom — to the
Logos, which is there on the physical plane through that
which represents it: the human word, human speech or
language. For human speech may truly be regarded from the
point of view of its connection with Wisdom. In earthly life
of man, Wisdom lives itself out through human thought. The
air that is breathed out through our larynx, configured
through our larynx and its movements, is wedded to the Wisdom
that dwells in our thoughts; and the content we have to
express is the inspiring Spirit. Every time you speak —
no matter how profane the impulse of your speaking is —
you have expressed earthly representation of the Trinity. The
thought in your head, and the configured air that passes
through your larynx, — these two arc wedded and united
under the influence of the Spirit (that is to say, when you
are voicing things of the sense-world, united by the percept
itself).

It is indeed
the earthly expression of the Trinity. And the Divine, the
spiritual Trinity, must stand behind it, — the
all-embracing Wisdom which becomes Teaching for mankind, and
which expresses the Universal content. Anthroposophical
Spiritual Science cannot admit or confess its faith in any
earthly constitution; for an earthly constitution, whatever
it might claim, would be unfolding mere claims of power.
Anthroposophical Spiritual Science takes the Virgin cosmic
Word in real earnest.

If we think in
the sense of anthroposophical Spiritual Science, then, in
this content of all that is brought forward by this Science,
we see not a mere sum of abstractions or abstract ideas but a
living entity that fills us and enfills us; For it can even
fill us in our soul with active impulse. Thus it becomes the
Word, the Teaching, not in a mere scholastic sense. For
spiritual-scientific Wisdom grows to be of service in the
social life. The Word itself becomes of social service, And
the content which it expresses — brought down from
super-sensible worlds into the world of sense, so to be the
underlying basis of our impulses of action — is the
inspiring Spirit. Thus I would say: We look for Pallas
Athene, the Virgin Wisdom, the Virgin Wisdom of the Cosmos;
but we also look for the Son who is born of her, who finds
expression in this: that in all the things we do and
will in the social life, the Virgin Wisdom is
working with us, giving us that which becomes the guiding
impulse of our willing and our doing. Then we express the
Spirit — the Holy Spirit, the Supersensible — in
our sense-perceptible actions on the physical plane.

All this
implies that the Wisdom which we have to seek in the sense of
Spiritual Science, must have a virginal character. Perhaps
you will ask, is there any sense or meaning in this? Is it
not mere talk, so many figures of speech.

There is indeed
a meaning in it — important, significant, immense.
Namely the following: Man turns his senses to the outer
world. That is his proper task; for to this end he is placed
into the world. What the senses as such receive, can only be
naive and innocent; for the animals too receive it, and to
the animals we cannot apply the ideas of ‘should’
or ‘should not.’ But man must go farther than
that. With his intellect he combines and associates the
things he perceives. What is the significance of this
associative intellect? The Physical Science of to-day already
gives an answer to this question (I mean, however, the
Physical Science itself, and not its learned
representatives).

The
combinatorial, associative, intellect, and all that man
thinks out concerning the impressions of his senses —
his perceptions — is something that arises out of his
own inner nature, and moreover, out of a comparatively lower
part of his nature. Man is exceedingly proud of his brain,
notably of the frontal portions. For a true Science, however,
the frontal portions of the brain are of far less value than
the portions that lie farther back, For the frontal portions
of the brain are in their essence no more than the transmuted
organ of smell. To be clever, in the sense of Physical
Science, is to have developed the olfactory nerves, as man,
to such an extent that you are equipped with good
association-nerves. These nerves are then effective
instruments for the associating or combining of sensory
ideas. To be clever, in the materialistic sense, is to have a
good metamorphosis of that part of the brain which, in the
lower creatures — the animals — is connected with
the nose. It is, so to speak, to be well “on the
scent” in the associating of ideas. These things have
indeed occasionally been pointed out by men who had a healthy
faculty of insight and penetration. One need but think of
this: if you have a sound feeling of such matters, you cannot
but say that to be “sharp” or clever on the
physical plane, is, in its essence, to have a peculiarly
developed “scent” or sense of smell —
transplanted into the human realm. It is, in a very real
sense, to be able to “sniff things out,” Thus the
Physical Science which has arisen by association of ideas is
the mere outcome of human beings “sniffing things
out” on the physical plane. This may be said in an
absolutely literal senses. In so doing man can arrive at all
manner of constructions of atomic processes, all manner of
ideas of chemical and physical laws, and the like. But it is
wide of the mark to pretend that there is anything very lofty
or highly developed in these things; they are but the result
of a metamorphosed sense of smell.

I said: Even
Physical Science bears witness to this fact. You may convince
yourself of what I have told you, from the physiological and
anatomical facts. Unhappily, the transmuted olfactory sense,
or “nose,” of our scholars is not yet quite
adequate to draw this conclusion, so they most continue
“nosing about” till they are able to draw this
conclusion, too!

Among those who
had healthy human feeling of this fact was Goethe. Goethe
said something highly significant from this point of view. As
I have shown for many years past and along many different
lines, Goethe demanded quite another trend of Physical
Science than that which actually arose in the 19th century
and continued into our time. He wanted to have expunged from
scientific research what is indeed quite justified in
ordinary life; he wanted it radically expunged from our
research into Nature. Goethe comes hack to this point again
and again. The thing that he wished to have expunged was
precisely the combining, the interpreting, the putting
constructions on the facts perceived with the senses. He
wanted to have the sense-perceived facts simply described
according to their own nature, as pure phenomena; he wanted
to refer the sense-perceived phenomena to their archetypal
phenomena, — the “Ur-phenomena.”
He did not want constructions put on them with the intellect,
theorizing and inquiring as to what might lie behind them
here or there.

There is a
wonderful saying of Goethe's, a saying that throws a vivid
light on his entire World-conception. “The blue of the
sky,” Goethe once said, “is in itself the Theory;
you should not look for anything behind it,” It was the
pure perception, the pure vision of things which Goethe
wanted men to seek. As to the intellect, he would only have
it used to put the phenomena together in such a way that they
would voice their own secrets. He wanted a Natural Research
free of hypotheses and intellectual constructions. This is
the very method of his Theory of Colour. People have failed
to understand the fundamental point. Goethe wanted the
associative intellect to refrain from putting constructions
on the sense-impressions; he wished it to take another path.
It amounts to this in other words: He wanted to make the
human intellect — the human faculty of intellectual
association — virginal, even in Natural Science. He wanted
to take away the unchaste quality it has, inasmuch as it has
suffered the Fall, so to speak, whereby it is now a mere
transmuted organ of smell. For it is so indeed: The one part
of the Fall is the event which we can place in the primeval
epoch of which I have so often told you. But there was also a
sequel to this “Fall into sin.” Again and again
in their subsequent evolution, the organs of man took on a
lower level than they should have had. The associative
intellect of man is indeed subject to the Fall, inasmuch as
it is working in the outer physical world.

For the outer
physical world it is quite justified. This physical intellect
cannot but be bound to the transmuted organs of smell. It
must be so, just as for the outer physical world physical
sexuality and reproduction must exist. In Science, however,
we should seek the virginity of the intellect; — That
is to say, we should loosen the intellect from the functions
it performs when, as it mere transmuted sense of smell, it
combines and associates the sensible objects. The blue of the
sky should not be interpreted in the sense of Physical
Science (Newtonian physics), as you will find it to-day in
every textbook of Physics. The blue of the sky itself is
Theory in Goethe's sense, — that is the true
conception. In this sphere, too, rightly to understand Goethe
is to see in him that personality who wanted to work entirely
in the spirit which is also the spirit of Spiritual Science.
Goethe thought consistently, right into the sphere of Natural
Research. In Natural Research he demanded only those theories
that go to the “Ur-phenomena,” the
archetypal phenomenon. He did not want all manner of atomic
theories, — theories of ions and electrons, theories of
gravitation and the like — deduce by the combining
intellect from the phenomena. Inasmuch as he thought thus, in
Physics itself Goethe was pointing to that which I desired to
point out when I referred to Pallas Athene as the
representative of Wisdom. Thereby alone, we begin even in the
realm of Natural Research to turn to the Son. We only begin
to do so when we free the Mother from these intellectual
constructions, and turn to the vision of the pure virgin
“Ur-phenomena.”

Herein you see
what a deep earnestness and significance is really contained
in that which we may call Goetheanism. I simply wanted to
point out to you, how — quite apart from the prevailing
culture, so-called — even in the 19th century the
impulses that lead in the other direction were there. Let us
be mindful of this fact. Then, too, we shall interpret truly
the requirements of the present time, and out of these
requirements we shall derive the true and the right impulses.
We live in a time of catastrophe. It would, of course, be
wrong to imagine that that which is catastrophe in the
Christmas sense must necessarily be catastrophe also in the
Easter sense. Indeed, from the catastrophes of to-day the
very opposite, the greatest things of human evolution, can
result, — if only humanity finds ways and means to
learn from them, and with straightforward sense and vision to
observe what has taken place.

If I bring
forward such ideas, which may be remote from the thoughts of
many of our friends, it is only to point out again and again
the important fact, that in our time we must not seek in a
comfortable way to work with the old concepts and ideas, but
strive in all earnestness towards new ideas and new
perceptions.

What is it
really underlies such a tendency as Goethe's, not to apply
the combinatorial intellect to the outer phenomena, but to
recognise the latter in their virgin nature; It is none other
than this: that when we do so, we are not letting the
intellect suffer the Fall into sin, by all manner of
intellectual combinations, of atoms and groups and complexes
of atoms, and ions, and gravitation, and so forth. We save
the intellect from mingling with the outer sensual nature, to
give birth to materialistic theories. When we do so, the
intellect turns in the other, in the spiritual direction, and
gives birth to the Son — that is, to the
spiritual-scientific teaching which leads at length to a real
understanding of man, of the whole man. For, as I told you in
these days, the ancient Wisdom only led up to a certain
point. Man, as it were, was not included in the wisdom of the
middle epoch, — the fourth PostAtlantean epoch. To-day
we have the task of understanding man, by a true grasp of
spiritual facts.

Humanity should
really be pining for concepts, new ideas. We must bring this
fully to our consciousness. And if we ask to-day. What
thoughts will be the best Christmas thoughts, what thoughts
will bear the best fruits after 33 years, the answer is: they
will be those thoughts which take their start from seeking
honestly and uprightly for a new grasp of the world, a new
grasp of reality. To develop a longing for what the world has
to reveal in the new sense will be the best of Christmas
thoughts; — not to want to remain contented with the
old. Alas! to this day it is an all-pervading impulse of
mankind, to stop short at the old, because humanity can with
such difficulty bestir itself to draw forth, from the inmost
being of the soul, that which shall be made known by human
lips. Man to-day can only rightly develop his task as man if
he unfolds the will, down to the very centre of his being, to
be genuine and true, — not only trying to ponder on the
old things, but to make the new — the new that must be
drawn out of the very depths of being into the content of his
faith and action.

In thoughtless
and inane repetition of what others say, one need not go so
far as yonder politician who, wishing to send out into the
world a great political manifesto in the year 1917, took up
an old political Pronunciamento of the year 1864,
and copied it almost word for word. Truly, one does not need
to think very deeply if, as a dominant politician of 1917,
one merely takes an old Brazilian document and copies it
sentence by sentence, and places it before the world as
though it were a great revelation. Truly, one need not go so
far as this Woodrow Wilson, who actually contrived to
fabricate the “highly important manifesto” which
he sent forth a short time ago, by copying almost word for
word a manifesto of the Emperor of Brazil of the year 1864.
But it is necessary to see things in their true form and
aspect, even such wretched details as this. One would be
almost overcome with pity for poor mankind, when men are
taking seriously things which if seen in their true light can
only represent the most appalling untruthfulness and perfidy,
passing throughout the world to-day.

I do not say
this to make any attack, — nay, not even to criticise;
but to awaken the sense of people, that they may open their
eyes at length, and see with open eyes what is happening.
Occasionally, nowadays, we see the world worshipping as
greatness things that are merely absurd and laughable. These
are precisely the things we must see through. If we develop
the will really to see into things, then we shall also
develop the Christmas thoughts which will become the true
Easter thoughts. For we may even say, paradoxical as it may
sound: the more full of pain and suffering this present is,
the greater the fruits it can bear for the future.

A time like
ours stands most in need of the poet's word not finding
fulfilment in it, — I mean the word of the poet who
said that “a great Time finds but it small and petty
generation.”

Full of pain is
our Time, yet great it can be; and in a certain sense, it
must find the men who can think greatly. But they will not be
the Wilsonians!